400 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
prominent—perhaps sometimes too prominent—a feature were prac- 
tically non-existent; discussion of the papers was not encouraged, 
d me n upon and re- 
Society bias in short, fallen into a routine from which nothing but 
a change of president would have set it free. 
Bentham had little patience with those whose work led them in 
directions with which he had no sympathy. Dr. Kuntze sums up 
ina siuiea sentence his position with regard to questions of 
nomenclature: ‘‘ Surely Bentham was a genius of —— I 
admire him asd , but he was a great sinner in nomenclature, who 
worked stupendously, but did not lose time in lo oking a for no 
rights of older authors and priority of their given n ” (Rev 
Gen. exlviii.). That Bentham considered no rieailiea. 
r —t 
Ferdinand von Mueller: ‘one of the last scientific letters written 
by him,” says Mr. Jeske ** which so clearly states the writer's 
views on many points in botany at the close of his career.’ 
Bentham is writing of Mueller’s Census of Australian Plants and 
severely criticizes that work, which, he says, ‘shows a <hr deal 
of laborious research into the dates of plant-names . . but 
all that is not botany ;"’ and he implores Mueller “to give up the 
vain endeavour to attach the initials ‘F. v. M.’ to as many specific 
names, good or bad, as possible.” The plea of convenience, which 
for so long characterized the Kew nomenclature, found a strong 
supporter in Bentham; thus (Journ. Linn. Soe. xix. 19) he s 
= nn — strict laws of priority ;” and adds, ‘it would in- 
eed be m e pedantry, highly inconvenient - Petnisliies and so far 
prc meaey to science,” to restore such nam 
His attitude towards those whose obadivations led them to the 
segregation of ae was similarly unsympathetic. His work was 
mainly carried on in the herbarium, ‘no twithstanding his dail 
popes: to the living plants in “ee Gardens, and the r preparation 
the Genera Plantarum and the n cessity of correlating an enor- 
0 one, g 
carried to excess, especially in these later days—it can hardly be 
: i eee published “ species” of Rubus or 
— will ultimately pore that rank; but Bentham’s dictum 
s first presidental address to the Linnean Society—** Mr. 
Jasth, Miiller, who in a three da; oe excursion in the Vosges finds 81 
new Brambles ‘and devotes 40 pages of the Bonplandia to their 
* Proceedings of Linnean Society, 1860-61, Ixxi. 
